About our Home

We offer 52 week care placements primarily for children between the ages of 8 and 16 years old, however we are registered to accept children up to 18 years of age and will continue to work with them for as long as we are needed. We specialise in working with the most vulnerable and challenging children and provide a safe and secure environment for children to develop and grow. We work with clearly defined boundaries in a nurturing way. The staff at the home have a shared understanding of the Residential task and are continually increasing their knowledge in this area.

The staff team are committed to working with the unconscious processes which take place with this child group and have the capacity to contain the powerful emotions, which lead to their challenging behaviour. The importance of children needing to regress and giving the opportunity for them to receive basic primary experiences is at the heart of the work we do. Our work is primarily based on social learning in which we believe children relearn appropriate behaviour through positive role modelling. We believe that how children live together within the home forms an important part of their development. In addition to this we work closely with Independent therapists who can assess and offer different kinds of therapy dependent on the individual needs of the child.

We provide unconditional care in a space where children can express themselves in a way that is not always acceptable within the wider community and yet remain safely contained by staff. It is preferred that children who are referred to us are admitted in a planned way, including pre admission visits to the home.

We work in partnership with the placing authorities and parents to ensure that all the children’s health, care and education needs are met and as such The Registered Manager and staff team work closely with social workers and parents in a professional capacity to support and help them to understand the work we are doing. The children’s family are welcomed at the home to visit and are actively included in periodic social functions for example, birthday celebrations, BBQ’s Sports days, presentation awards, Christmas parties.

We work holistically with all children placed with us. The care staff accompany the children to our school which assists with the long-term inclusion of our children despite the high levels of challenging behaviour and the staff knowledge and understanding around the needs of the children and the high ratio of staff help contain difficult behaviour where some other EBD schools have failed.

Although we understand that at times it is not possible, our philosophy is to “Never give up on a child” This requires the staff to work hard to think about and process the difficult emotional material presented each day by the children. We employ a Tavistock trained consultant who meets with staff on a fortnightly basis to help us to understand our role and deal with the projected  feelings we experience while working in this environment.

We have an understanding of group dynamics and the effect this can have on all within the home. We are committed to working to enable us to deliver the most consistent quality of care. We offer opportunities to the children we care for to develop secure attachments with particular adults through the key worker system and recognise the need for as little disruption in this area as possible.

Our hope is that the work we do will enable the children to recover from their past negative experiences and hopefully move on from us, whether to family placements or independence with a feeling of being genuinely cared for and thought about.

While we recognise that for many children, growing up in a family environment is the best outcome, we also recognise that for some children this is not possible and in this respect long term residential care is a preferred option.